Healthcare fund helps save baby girl with rare heart condition
Clarissa Gan was barely three months old when her parents found out that she had a rare heart defect. She was admitted to Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur Hospital in early October 2014 and was diagnosed with Anomalous Left Coronary Artery.
In this very rare condition, the left coronary artery that supplies oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle, is “anomalous” or abnormal in form. In a normal heart, the left coronary artery arises from the aorta, which is the large vessel that carries oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the body. But in this case, the left coronary artery arises from the pulmonary artery instead of from the aorta. The pulmonary artery carries oxygen-depleted blood from the heart to the lungs. Because the anomalous left coronary artery receives its blood from the pulmonaryartery rather than the aorta, it supplies the heart muscle with blood that is low in oxygen.
Secondly, as the blood pressure is three times lower in the pulmonary artery than in the aorta, blood will tend to flow backwards into the pulmonary artery from the coronary artery. This stealing of blood away from the heart muscle can have dire consequences resulting in heart attacks in children in the first year of life.
Clarissa underwent the surgery on October 3, 2014 and required intensive care treatment. Her condition had to be monitored closely and she was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for almost three months.Her parents finally brought her home on January 6, 2015.
Although she still has difficulty eating, she is much healthier now. Her parents are taking one step at a time to help her adjust to daily life.
Her father is a mechanic and the sole breadwinner of the family. Her mother is a housewife and takes care of Clarissa and a five-year-old son. To afford the high medical cost of her rare heart condition, Clarissa’s parents had to seek financial help from a fund suggested by their attending doctor.
They asked the help of the Khazanah-IHH Healthcare Fund, which provides partial and fully sponsored medical treatment to needy patients in Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey. They applied for the Fund and received all the help they needed for Clarissa’s surgery.
The Fund, launched on July 3, 2012, is worth RM50 million and will be disbursed over a span of five years until 2017. It is fully funded by Khazanah Nasional Berhad via its listed healthcare arm, IHH Healthcare Berhad (IHH).
Seventy percent of the Fund amounting to RM 35 million has been allocated to help needy patients in Malaysia (the rest being disbursed in Turkey and Singapore with the same objective to help needy communities there).
Through the Pantai and Gleneagles hospitals, the needy can receive treatments in areas such as Ophthalmology, Cardiology (paediatric and adults), Orthopedic and General Surgery.
